


I Just Want My Goldfish To Live, Dammit

by shrill_fangirl_screaming



Series: all the stony au oneshots [12]
Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies), The Avengers - Ambiguous Fandom
Genre: Alternate Universe, M/M, crazy goldfish owner au, no powers au
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-04-03
Updated: 2015-04-03
Packaged: 2018-03-21 03:36:04
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,337
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3675897
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/shrill_fangirl_screaming/pseuds/shrill_fangirl_screaming
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Steve is getting sick of people laughing at him trying to save his goldfish. Tony doesn't laugh.</p>
<p>(does not have to be read in conjunction with the rest of the series)</p>
            </blockquote>





	I Just Want My Goldfish To Live, Dammit

**Author's Note:**

> This is almost definitely not up to my usual level of quality and it's extremely cracky but hey, I haven't posted in a while so I figured I might as well. Once again, idea came from a list of weird AUs on tumblr.

Yes, Steve knew the lifespan of the average goldfish. He was also painfully aware that Bucky was an average goldfish. But Bucky was _his_ goldfish, dammit, and Steve was not going to let him die.

The fish specialist at Petco had laughed at him and tried to sell him a new goldfish for three dollars.

The cashier at Aquariums R Us told him to try a bunch of things he’s already done and tried to sell him a new goldfish for thirty dollars.

The fish specialist at the first PetSmart had side-eyed the hell out of him and tried to sell him a new goldfish for two dollars and ninety-nine cents.

He didn’t want a new goldfish. He wanted Bucky better.

Whatever, fourth time and second PetSmart is the charm, right? People say that.

He slams the door of his roommate’s beat-up car (he couldn’t take Bucky on his normal bike and Nat, for reasons unknown, owns a four-door sedan like a middle-aged man) and carefully walks around the front to extract Bucky from his place of honor in the front seat, in his travel aquarium. (He knows how crazy he sounds, but he _just wants his goddamn fish to get better._ )

“All right, buddy, let’s go,” he says to his goldfish, who’s swimming in circles around his tank more slowly than usual, white fuzzy growths spreading up his sides. He places the travel aquarium in the baby stroller he brought for this exact purpose (minimizing disturbances to the tank helps prevent disease and might help Bucky get better).

Thankfully, it’s in the middle of a work day, so not many people are around to judge the hell out of him. The layout of this PetSmart is different than his usual, but it takes him barely a minute to find the fish section and storm over, placing Bucky’s tank carefully on the table in front of a bored-looking guy in a PetSmart vest and goatee. “Fix. My. Fish,” he says.

“Hello to you too,” the guy replies. “What?”

Steve has been running from pet store to pet store and mocked unrepentantly since seven o’clock this morning and he owes Natasha several large favors for borrowing her car and he is running perilously low on patience. “My fish. Right there. His name is Bucky. Fix him.”

The guy- Tony, it says on his nametag- only side-eyes him a little bit before looking carefully at the fish. “Why the hell did you bring him with you?”

“The guy at the first Petco was incompetent,” Steve mutters.

“The stress of being moved is only going to make this worse,” Tony says. “Did you change anything in his tank recently, get a new filter or food or something?”

Steve shakes his head. “No, everything is the same as always.”

Tony nods and picks up the tank carefully, bringing Bucky up to eye level. The white growths on his sides look worse in the bright fluorescent light of PetSmart. For a long moment, there’s silence as Tony studies the fish carefully. Then he looks Steve over and asks, “Did the cat try to eat him recently?”

“Cat?” Steve echoes dumbly.

“I work at a fucking PetSmart, I know what black cat fur looks like on clothes. Did the cat try to break into his aquarium or something recently?” Tony asks.

“I don’t know, it’s Natasha’s cat, I don’t think so, can you please fix my freaking fish?”

Tony places the tank down with the utmost care. “If the cat’s new, or if it tried to break into the aquarium, it would have stressed your fish out and introduced new contaminants to your tank. This is a fungal infection and that’s probably the cause.”

Cold, clear relief shoots through Steve. “So he’s fine?”

“He’s going to be,” Tony says. He ducks his head down beneath his counter and comes out with a few bottles. “Methylene Blue,” he says, cracking open the top of the aquarium and adding a few drops, “And a little more aquarium salt-“ he shakes some in- “And he should be good as new in a week or two.”

Steve places a hand on the tank and resists the urge to hug it. The last time he hugged the tank in front of another human, Natasha filed it away in her database of things to tease him endlessly about (and, in more serious moments, try to send him to therapy for). “Thank you. You say the cat did that?”

“Keep the cat out of the fish’s room and he’ll be fine,” Tony replies.

Steve adds his other hand to the tank’s top. “Thank you so much.”

Tony nods and pushes the bottles at him. “If I give you these for free, will you tell me why you brought your fish to multiple pet stores in a portable tank instead of buying a new one for three bucks?”

Steve considered the question, sighing. The last few people who’d asked (he’s looking at you, Petco Asshole) had done it with this catty, judgmental tone. Tony just seemed curious. Plus, he’d fixed Bucky. But it’s dumb. But the guy was giving him free stuff. Finally, he sighs one more time and says, “My buddy, he’s in Afghanistan. Army. He, uh, he got me this fish as a going-away present, and I named it after him, and… it’s stupid, but I feel like if I let the damn fish die my buddy’s gonna die out there.”

There’s silence as Tony considers that answer for a long moment. “Okay,” he says.

“Okay?” Steve replies, incredulous. “It’s completely irrational and Natasha wants me to go to therapy over my attachment to the damn thing.”

Tony shrugs. “I mean, it’s kind of irrational, but hey, you know it’s irrational, and as far as I can tell the only crazy thing it’s made you do is drive your pet goldfish to a bunch of pet stores on a Thursday morning, so I say you’re doing pretty okay. Believe me, if my coping mechanism for bullshit had been taking irrationally good care of a goldfish, my friend Pepper would have had much healthier stress levels. Goldfish are better than panic attacks.”

There is a lot of eye contact. Steve isn’t sure what to say but Tony seems more than happy to look him levelly in the eye, his gaze driving his point home. “Thank you for fixing him,” Steve says.

“No problem,” Tony replies, breaking the eye contact and placing the bottles of medicine and aquarium salt into his hands. “I work every Tuesday, Thursday, and Sunday from eight to one, if your fish ever gets sick again.”

Steve nods, picks up his travel aquarium, and leaves.

After he has secured Bucky back in his place of honor in the passenger seat, he abruptly realizes that he likes Tony. No one else has ever said that his somewhat unhealthy attachment to a goldfish was okay. Everyone treated him like a fragile leper over it.

“I’ll be back in a second, buddy,” Steve says to Bucky as he carefully cracks a window and shuts the door. “Right back.”

He strides right back over to Tony’s counter and asks him out on a date.

Tony slides him his number, scrawled on the bottom of a brochure about proper aquarium care. “You may text me, on the condition that your fish will not attend any and all future dates, unless I end up at your house, in which case I respect that he was there first and he can stay as long as he doesn’t watch.”

“Sure,” Steve says. “Okay.”

Tony waves an imperious hand at the door, saying, “I won’t make you stay and make small talk because I’m positive you left your fish in your car and I would bet you anything you’re worried about the greenhouse effect in your car heating up his water and decreasing dissolved oxygen content.”

“I cracked a window,” Steve says, pulling up a chair and sitting down behind the counter, “He’ll live.”

Tony smiles.


End file.
